Future birthplace of Captain Kirk / SUN 12-7-25 / Sister to Lex Luthor / Arabic greeting and farewell / One chain x one furlong / A urinal, according to Duchamp / Solos at a party / Crazy Horse and fellow tribespeople / Russian crepes / Personification of England, Scotland and Wales / Trees commonly confused with birches / Bit of letter-shaped hardware / Farm-share program, for short / Alter, as a T-shirt for a Phish concert, say / It's often rapped but never spoken

Constructor: Kate Jensen

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: "Original Thinkers" — puns describing inventors or discoverers of various kinds (but also mountain climbers? I don't really understand the parameters, tbh)

Theme answers:

• POWER COUPLE (23A: Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison?)
• BIRDBRAIN (25A: John James Audubon?)
• CABLE GUY (38A: Samuel Morse?)
• MOUNTAIN GOAT (43A: Sir Edmund Hillary?)
• MOTION DETECTOR (59A: Sir Isaac Newton?)
• SEEDY CHARACTER (80A: Gregor Mendel?)
• DRIVING FORCE (93A: Henry Ford?)
• AIRHEADS (98A: Orville and Wilbur Wright?)
• DREAM TEAM (115A: Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung?)
• STAR WITNESS (118A: Galileo Galilei?)

Word of the Day: LENA Luthor (87A: Sister to Lex Luthor) —

Lena Luthor is the name of two fictional comic book characters in DC Comics. The first one, introduced in 1961, is the sister of Superman's nemesis Lex Luthor, while the second one, introduced in the year 2000, is Luthor's daughter, named after her aunt.

On live-action television, the original Lena Luthor was portrayed by Denise Gossett in a 1991 episode of Superboy, Cassidy Freeman in three seasons (2008–2011) of Smallville, and by Katie McGrath in five seasons (2016–2021) of Supergirl. (wikipedia)

• • •

[Sir Edmund Hillary]

People who love puns will probably like this. I think. I don't know. Some of the puns are decent, but the whole concept doesn't seem very coherent to me. I think the problem starts with the title: "Original Thinkers." What did Sir Edmund Hillary "think" of, besides climbing Everest? Most of these guys (all guys) are scientists of one kind or another, people who invented or discovered ... things. But then there's Hillary, who was just the first to do something. Same with the Wrights, maybe? And Ford ... he didn't invent the automobile, but he pioneered ... well, Fordism. The assembly line. Ford's Model T was the "first mass-affordable automobile," so like the others, he's associated with being "first" (or "Original??") at something. Ford is a big name, obviously, but he doesn't seem quite as in-keeping with the apparent theme of the puzzle is concerned. Is Hillary the GOAT in the sense of "Greatest of All Time?" I think that's what's meant. I just found myself shrugging a lot. Like, the puns are fine, but the theme set seems very loose, and the puzzle seems to be trying to make up for its lack of coherence with sheer volume (ten themers is a lot of themers). Figuring out the pun phrases did involve a bit of a challenge (for a change), so that was nice. And like I say, they mostly work, as puns. They didn't seem particularly funny to me, but I'm kind of immune to puns unless they are incredibly ambitious and ridiculous. POWER COUPLE is very apt, but aptness isn't exactly hilarity. As for the fill, it's a bit below average, but only just a bit, and I'm not that surprised if it buckles a little under the weight of all these themers. Still, CERSEI GRIS EERIE IDEST INRE TSAR SSNS is a lot of unpleasantness ... and that's just the SE corner. Other parts of the grid do fare better, but not much better. ANOD, OTIC, ENROOTS ... ****ing REMEND!?!? YIPES. All in all, this wasn't terrible, but it just fell a little flat. 

Maybe we should look at the dudes in the themers systematically. What were the "original thoughts" that made them worthy of being in this grid? 

• Edison invented the electric light bulb (among many other "power"-related things), and Tesla helped designed the modern AC electricity supply system
• Audubon, of course, invented birds
• Morse invented a code used for telegraphs (sent by wires or "cables")
• Hillary climbed a big mountain
• Newton developed laws of motion
• Mendel was the founder of modern genetics (due to his experiments with pea "seeds")
• Ford, we covered
• Wright Brothers were "First in Flight" (according to a license plate I read once)
• Freud and Jung, like Freddy Krueger (Freudy Krueger?), are big names in "dreaming"
• Galileo looked at stars ("the father of observational astronomy")

The nature of the theme is what gave this puzzle most of its difficulty (which, as I say, was about average). I got BIRD but then had to piece together the second part, I got MOUNTAIN but had to piece together the second part from crosses, lather rinse repeat. Not all the themers were like that, but most were. The toughest part of the puzzle for me was the deep south, where I absolutely could not remember CERSEI's name (never made it past ep. 1 of that show), and I definitely could've used her for O-RING, which I absolutely needed in order to get GRIS (????). Is that Spanish for "gray?" And "gray" is a "drab color?" How is any drabber than most house colors. White, off-white, brownish ... those all seem pretty "drab" to me. Nothing about "house color" says "gray" to me, at all. Also, foreign colors, meh. Anyway, CERSEI / O-RING / GRIS had me knotted up a little bit. Other problems were relatively small, sometimes just one square. Is it YIKES (me) or YIPES (the puzzle)? Is it GAITER or GAITOR? (it's the former) (65A: Shoe covering). CHAMP or CHOMP? (38D: Bite down hard) (if you "champ at the bit" you "bite down hard" on it, don't you?) (that last question is for horses only) (see: chomping v. champing (at the bit)). I could've sworn Buffalo was NNW from Pittsburgh, but ... no, it's NNE (I always think Buffalo's much closer to Erie than it really is). 

There were also two "S" plurals that I don't think of as conventionally being "S" plurals. That is, BLINI and OGLALA both seem inherent plural to me, so putting an "S" on the end of either is ... odd (26D: Russian crepes + 37D: Crazy Horse and fellow tribespeople). In fact, the crossword has definitely taught me that BLINI is the plural and that BLIN is the singular, so BLINIS is like say horseses (I blame "champ/CHOMP" for this example). 

[see? BLIN! No foolin']

Bullets:

• 40D: Personification of England, Scotland and Wales (BRITANNIA) — forgot that BRITANNIA was a ... person? Just sounds like an olde-tyme name for "Britain." But now that I think about it, I can picture her. Really wanted JOHN BULL here. 

[BRITANNIA]

[JOHN BULL]

• 1D: Solos at a party (CUPS) — I know what Solo Cups are (they litter the streets in student neighborhoods on Sunday mornings), but this was still tough for me. "Solos" is disguised very neatly as a verb here. Han Solo at his family reunion, that would also involve [Solos at a party].
• 89D: Like many couples at theaters (ON DATES) — oof. Double oof. First oof is for the non-answer of it all (ON A DATE would be bad enough, but ON DATES, yeesh). Second oof is for the fact that "COUPLE" is already in the grid and therefore should not not not be in a clue. You can dupe short words, but COUPLE is too long to dupe, too conspicuous. This answer into REMEND was probably the most face-making part of the puzzle for me.
• 19A: Bit of letter-shaped hardware (U-BOLT) — bad enough to have one letter-shaped answer in the grid, we get to suffer through two (see O-RING—108A: Bit of letter-shaped hardware). Giving them the same clue does not provide nearly enough whimsy to overcome the gag factor).
• 51A: Trees commonly confused with birches (ASPENS) — me: "... all of them?" (I cannot identify trees to save my life—sugar maples, those are in my front yard, so I know those; and I know pines ... and palms ... and fig trees, weirdly (these were in my back yard as a child). But otherwise, I'm extremely tree illiterate. I know the names, but not the actual trees those names go with. I probably know more trees than I think I do, but I wouldn't steer toward the "Trees" category on Jeopardy!, is what I'm saying.
• 76A: Rain on your wedding day, perhaps (OMEN) — it rained on my wedding day. Is that bad? It's been 22 years and my marriage seems fine. Is that ironic? What does "ironic" even mean? Who can say? Let's ask this lady:

• 4D: Pest whose name is a homophone for what you might do when you see it (FLEA) — kept reading the first word as "Pet" and thinking "What do I do when I see a pet? Smile? GRIN? Say 'Who's a good boy!?'?" No idea. But it's a "pest." You flee from a FLEA. I guess you might. But if they're on your own pet, I don't think "fleeing" is gonna help you much.

Speaking of pets (and hopefully not fleas), it's 🌲🐈Holiday Pet Pics🐕🌲 time once again, so get those pictures of your animals in holiday settings in to me (rexparker at icloud dot com) before this Thursday, and then I'll start the animal parade, which (given how many pet pics I've received already) should continue through the New Year. Here's a preview—look how easy it is to turn your photo of Cinnamon and chewed-up tissues ...  

... into a lovely holiday greeting card!

Just add a frame and a caption and voila! The tissues are now, uh, snow! Yeah, snow. [Thanks, Janine!]

That's all. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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Side effect after a BBQ meal, informally / SAT 12-6-25 / Having a good aura, in slang / Classic arcade game with a pyramid / Ratty is one in "The Wind in the Willows" / Portrayer of Glinda in 2024's "Wicked," to fans / Singer with the top 10 albums "Crash" and "Brat" / Warning preceding some "madness" during March Madness / Source of rhythm in electronic music / Title film character with a "lucky fin" / Chinese surname transliterating "Zuo"

Constructor: Marshal Herrmann

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: RENÉ Coty (20D: Former French president ___ Coty) —

Gustave Jules René Coty (French: [ʁəne kɔti]; 20 March 1882 – 22 November 1962) was President of France from 1954 to 1959. He was the second and last president of the Fourth French Republic. [...] As President of the Republic, Coty was even less active than his predecessor in trying to influence policy. His presidency was troubled by the political instability of the Fourth Republic and the Algerian question. With the deepening of the crisis in 1958, on 29 May of that year, President Coty appealed to Charles de Gaulle, the "most illustrious of Frenchmen" to become the last Prime Minister of the Fourth Republic. Coty had threatened to resign if de Gaulle's appointment was not approved by the National Assembly. // De Gaulle drafted a new constitution, and on 28 September, a referendum took place in which 79.2% of those who voted supported the proposals, which led to the Fifth Republic. De Gaulle was elected as president of the new republic by parliament in December, and succeeded Coty on 9 January 1959. Coty was a member of the Constitutional Council from 1959 until his death in 1962. (wikipedia)

• • •

As a RATER (😒), I nearly took this thing down to 3-and-a-half stars just for that "Q" line. There's something about showy tricks that really takes me out of the puzzle. Makes me roll my eyes and kind of groan disappointedly. A great puzzle doesn't need such cheap frippery, and this puzzle was indeed a great puzzle to that point. There's no harm done by the "Q"s—they're handled very cleanly. If the grid were peppered with Qs and Js and other Scrabbly letters and still came out clean, that would be fine. But something lining up all those ducks in a row (all those Q-uacks) felt disappointing—the kind of superficial "razzle-dazzle" that a great puzzle simply doesn't need. Other people might fault this puzzle for having "too much pop culture" or being "too slangy"—we all have our peeves. But I really enjoyed the vibes of this one. The VIBEY vibes. The marquee fill was crushing it, every corner, 1-2-3, 1-2-3, 1-2-3 ... really impressive. And the short stuff, the glue, was relatively inoffensive. ELO OLEO TSO ARI ICEE BE-IN etc. are all doing what they're supposed to do—holding good stuff together and staying spread out. The craftsmanship here is really incredible ... which is why that "Q" flourish seems so garish. You have something elegant on your hands, don't ruin it with unnecessary and gaudy decoration. Not in a themeless puzzle. Doesn't need it. Doesn't want it.

This didn't start out terribly promising, as I struggled to get toeholds, which were all scattered and short and ineffective. The puzzle didn't feel like much of anything at this point ...

... but then those toeholds started to pay off as I got real traction and the longer answers really opened up. Exploded, really, in popcorny bursts of goodness ...

"THAT'S A WRAP," "I AM SO THERE!," "RUMOR HAS IT..."—That is a lovely colonnade of colloquialness [see ... alliteration ... there's another cheap, superficial gimmick ... distracting ... I have to decide "is it worth it?" And I don't think it is ... but I'm gonna leave it here as an object lesson, a warning against gestures and flourishes that call excessive attention to themselves]. And the stacks and colonnades keep coming, all the way around the grid, in every corner. No let up. No throwaways, no filler—no scrubs!

I think the SW corner was the pinnacle of the puzzle for me. I was having a decent time to that point, but was not yet feeling impressed. Usually, while I'm solving, I'm just thinking about solving—that is, I'm not really in "appreciation" mode, I'm in "get through it" mode. Power mode. Speedsolver mode. So if I actually feel impressed mid-solve, that means the puzzle has really broken through and penetrated my game-mode brain, and that is quite something. That's the high I'm chasing all the time. I love that moment when I say (often aloud) to myself, "oh, that's good." Sometimes happily, sometimes grudgingly (if it took me a while to get, for instance), but however I get there, it's always good to get there, and that SW corner really got me there. MEAT SWEATS in particular—that was the first of the long answers to fall down there, and I built the stack from there, ending with a very appropriate "HOLY SMOKES!" I like that "HOLY SMOKES!" conveys my feelings about the wonders of that corner, and also contains the word "smokes," which plays off of "MEAT" really nicely. The rest of the puzzle was solid—above average, for sure. But that SW corner ... I'll be feeling that SW corner all day. Not very often that one recollects MEAT SWEATS with any degree of fondness, but HOLY SMOKES, I gotta tell ya, CHUM, that was a good corner.

The puzzle could've stood to be harder. Quite a bit harder, actually. After I got going on this one, I didn't encounter any significant hold-ups on my way to the finish. I haven't read (or had read to me) The Wind in the Willows since I was a child, so Ratty ... (33D: Ratty is one in "The Wind in the Willows") ...  I assumed (correctly) that he was rat-like, rattish, rodenticious, but that still didn't help me figure out exactly what word was supposed to follow WATER. When "mouse" and "rat" didn't fit, I was plum out of ideas. Actually, no—I remember now: I had WATERMOLE in there for a bit! Man, thank god MIBEY looked so terribly, awfully wrong at 49A: Having a good aura, in slang (VIBEY). Since the answer was "slang," it would've been easy enough to convince myself that I just didn't know the slang in question. "Oh, yeah, MIBEY, that's what middle-schoolers are saying now. 6-7 is out, MIBEY is in. Oxford's making it their Word of the Year, didn't you know?" [Oxford's actual Word of the Year this year: rage bait]. But thankfully my "check your damned crosses" instinct is pretty strong when something smells fishy, so the MOLE became a VOLE. I know what VOLEs are. When we had dogs, I would set them loose to chase the "VOLEs and stoats and weasels" (much more storybook-sounding than the banal reality of squirrels and chipmunks). But WATERVOLE, that's a new one to me. Or newish. Again, pretty sure I read The Wind in the Willows at some point. Just not recently.

Bullets:

• 8D: Singer with the top 10 albums "Crash" and "Brat" (CHARLI XCX) — you are not allowed to say you've never heard of CHARLI XCX because if you have been solving regularly for more than a month or so, you definitely have heard of her. Here we go: October 17, 2025. She's a big pop star. If you go to the movies at all and have seen the trailers for next year's Wuthering Heights, you've seen her name—she's doing the music for that movie and boy do they want people to know it. Rare that you see a songwriter / composer / musician credited in the trailer. ("Original songs by CHARLI XCX")

• 34A: Director Jon M. ___ (CHU) — I'm not much for cross-referenced clues, but it's a little weird that he wasn't tied to the ARI clue (38A: Portrayer of Glinda in 2024's "Wicked," to fans), since he directed the dang movie in question. Also, weird that they didn't give CHU an identifying movie at all, or update the movie in the ARI clue to Wicked: For Good, which CHU also directed, and which is in theaters now, breaking all kinds of box office records.
• 56A: Warning preceding some "madness" during March Madness (UPSET ALERT) — this is very niche, but I still love it. And even if you don't pay attention to college basketball, the answer is ultimately inferable. 
• 9D: Tennis duo? (ENS) — a very basic "letteral" clue. The "duo" are the pair of letters in the word "Tennis," i.e. the "n"s (ENS). 
• 29D: Yoga pants and such (ACTIVEWEAR) — anyone write in ATHLEISURE there? It fits. I mean, it really fits. I had some crosses and so didn't make this particular mistake, but I sympathize with anyone who did.

That's all. See you next time. And keep those 🌲🐈Holiday Pet Pics🐕🌲 coming (rexparker at icloud dot com). I'll start the pet picture parade next Thursday. Here's a preview—a picture that seems particularly appropriate for today's puzzle:

[Eevee and Biscuit—looking nice, thinking naughty]
[thanks, Linda!]

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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